It’s not a good point. Lasik is legal in golf, but EPO is not legal in cycling. Pretty simple.
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Just to play devil’s advocate, would it be the same as someone having a lung transplant because they were born with lungs that weren’t perfect?
I don’t have a problem with Lasik, and very much do have a problem with doping in sport, but I can for sure see the analogy that was trying to be made.
One is using a medical procedure to make up for a genetic defect/disadvantage, the other is using a medical procedure to make up for a perceived disadvantage.
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No.
What Lance did would be like someone purposely cheating on the score card in pro golf. Then bullying & threatening his playing partner to not tell.
Disgraceful.
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Maybe, but we’re talking modifying the body. Score card cheating would be like course cutting no?
It’s not like it matters, it’s just an interesting discussion where people interpret different lines.
The line seems fairly obvious - if you are breaking the rules you are cheating. Breaking rules, in general, gives one an unfair advantage over others.
Modifying ones body to improve performance is not the line for cheating. If it were, every torn ACL would be a career ending injury. Chris Froome would not be allowed to race anymore, etc. etc.
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I think this is an entirely different ballpark. If someone had a lung transplant they would probably not be able to compete at Tour de France level.
Regarding the EPO, I think this is a grey zone. I.e. it is obviously doping. However…
I quickly looked up some science. EPO is naturally produced by kidneys. Leaving aside diseases, some people’s kidney can do this better, other’s less well. Would you allow people who have naturally low EPO to use the supplement as long as it is within healthy level? Or maybe we should just say that’s their fate and they should suck it up? If you happen to be a short person, you will not be able to compete in NBA. Period. Not a big deal. On the other hand, people with asthma are allowed to use inhalers. What’s the difference? Ah, the rules are different for asthma patients.
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Absolutely, that’s kind of what I’m getting at. Someone with eyes that function, but aren’t as good as someone else is at a “disadvantage”, much the same as someone who produces less EPO, or has smaller lungs, or lower mitochondrial density etc.
It’s always a small stepping stone from some innocuous mode of cheating, until they’re doing every conceivable aid possible.
Lasik and EPO clearly aren’t the same, but I can for sure see the line of thinking
leaving aside the obvious answer “EPO is illegal, albuterol is not”), the main difference is that, at prescribed usage, albuterol is not performance-enhancing for non-asthmatics. And technically it is not performance-enhancing for asthmatics as it does nothing to expand their lung capacity, it simply allows them to function normally.
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You are talking about micro-dosing and that is very much against the rules and 100% doping.
As for asthma… If you have asthma and take an inhaler it takes you to a normal level. If you do not have asthma it does nothing for you.
Say you have a deficiency in “natural EPO” and you take medicine and get back to normal. But someone who is not deficient takes it and now they also get a boost.
And there’s the difference.
And even abusing albuterol, it’s not going to yield a 10-20% boost in performance like EPO or blood bags. It’s not even close. Armstrong says EPo was worth 10%. In the Icarus documentary, the guy said 20%.
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Well it depends if you just go to Riis dosages or if you take it all the way to it all the way to Munzer.
Unlike testosterone, EPO really will kill you. Except for tren which might make you crazy enough to die…and will certainly at least kill your marriage.
It’s worth mentioning that Chris Froome (and probably others, but most famously Chris Froome) got in trouble for his inhaler use when a blood test showed higher than expected levels. To use it at all, he needed a Therapeutic Use Exemption. Basically, any medicine that anyone thinks may be performance enhancing is regulated, requiring special permission and it has to be used within specific limits.
At least that’s the theory behind the UCI’s rule–though as others have pointed out, asthma medication probably isn’t performance enhancing. In fact, if Chris Froome was really taking as much as his test showed, and more than he claimed/was supposed to, it could have had a negative affect. (My doc thinks I should take far less than Chris Froome was supposed to be taking out of concern for negative effects of overuse).
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Yes. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but it wasn’t long ago that the whole peloton had “asthma”
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I don’t know about ‘the whole’ peloton, but asthma is more common among cyclists than the general population–and that includes among amateur athletes. From some google searches, it seems to be related to higher levels of exposure to polluted air where we cycle, the higher demands we put on our lungs (which may cause lung problems, but could also expose minor cases of asthma which would not ever be diagnosed among non-athletes). There’s also the possibility that asthmatics are attracted to endurance sports compared to other types of athletics which have require shorter but stronger lung function–this probably true of me as I was diagnosed long before I got into cycling.
Apparently, asthma is much much more common among swimmers.
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So well said. Lance was a prick the whole damn time and people seemed to gloss over that fact because he was the cancer guy winning 7 tours. His “era” is when I really got heavily into the sport and if one thing is clear, it was definitely all of them doping and no, Lance wasn’t the driving force behind others doping (currently almost finished with Daniel Friebe’s book on Jan) or the reason the sport was where it was. He was merely a dude that doped and won in that era - would it have helped him more than Ullrich/others? Who knows, but they were all doing it.
I personally liked Lance and still like Lance quite a bit! To be upset the guy is a prick now that he’s been outed as being less than nice to everyone is kind of pathetic and shows folks willingly allowed the rug to be pulled over their eyes.
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No. People also have varying levels of testosterone, etc. Rules are not meant to make everyone equal, they are meant to ensure everyone competing has the same opportunity to train and win without the need of risking their health. Moreover, individuals do not exist in a vacuum. If person X has lower testosterone than me, they might also have other more “feminine” features, like narrower shoulders or maybe they weigh significantly less than me, a 6’3, 90kg barn door. If they were allowed to elevate their testosterone because it is lower would be giving them further advantages. I don’t know what an equivalent for EPO might be, but I think the testosterone example is good enough.
Here is an alternative solution to someone having naturally low EPO that I think shows the silliness of this line of thinking: Would it be reasonable to lower everyone’s EPO level to the level of the person with the lowest count?
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Yeah, a lot of us followed cycling back then. We saw him destroy people’s lives, lie, and cheat. We knew he was a prick then too. Pretending all he did wrong was “dope just like everyone else” and none of us were speaking out against all his wrongdoing is creating revisionist history.
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I don’t believe what I stated is revisionist. For anyone paying attention, all of that was visible from 99-09, yet suddenly people got upset and have stayed upset. I’m not saying it’s right/wrong, I’m saying folks taking the bait are upset they took the bait.
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The other distinction is that riders were diagnosed with “Exercise Induced Asthma” vs. “regular” asthma. The main reason why you see such a higher prevelance of EIA among athletes is because they are…wait for it…exercising more than the general population.
My guess is that if the general population exercised more at higher levels, you’d see a significant increase in people diagnosed with EIA.
As someone with EIA, i never notice it in my daily life…ever. But on the bike, especially in cold weather, it can be pretty brutal. I once had to stop on the side of the road because I literally could not get enough air to keep riding.
So it makes perfect sense to me that more riders in the peloton have EIA.
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Had -7 cooperated with USADA and their investigation (like everyone else), he would have received a similar punishment as others and would still be involved in the sport today.
THAT is the reason he got the ban he did more than anything else.
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